By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

TOURISM Minister Chester Cooper urged Bahamian investors to open their homes to help meet tourism demand, citing room capacity as a challenge due to high hotel occupancy rates.

“Our industry is booming, but we need more rooms,” Mr Cooper said during his contribution to the budget debate in Parliament yesterday.

Mr Cooper said local hotels are constantly at capacity and that the vacation rental sector can serve as a “vital supplement” to accommodate guest stays.

“Whilst we build more hotels, this is the fastest way to expand capacity,” he said. “ So, I call on Bahamians investors to open your homes, help us to solve this incredible problem –– whilst making money and creating wealth.”

He said the Tourism Development Corporation would support the sector.

The corporation’s purpose will be to facilitate more and enhanced Bahamian-owned tourism offerings.

“Tourism is by far our biggest industry, and we must be the biggest owners of it, and we need to be intentional and deliberate about this strategy,” Mr Cooper said.

He said tourism numbers continue to beat pre-pandemic levels and again forecasted visitor arrivals to be over 8 million at year’s end.

“At the end of April 2023, overall air and sea arrivals surpassed 2022 levels by 79 per cent and exceeded the banner 2019 numbers by 32 per cent,” he said. “Looking specifically at the numbers, between January to April 2022, we welcomed an overall 1.9 million visitors. During that same period in 2019, we welcomed 2.7 million visitors but guess what, in the same four-month period this year, we welcomed some 3.5 million visitors and we got eight more months left.”

He said if The Bahamas continues on this path, visitor arrivals will surpass 2019 numbers, which was considered a record-breaking year.

Regarding air stopover arrivals, he said this year’s numbers surpassed 2022 levels by 34 per cent and matched 2019 performance rates, “pacing well ahead of overall global pre-pandemic recovery forecasts.”

“At some point within this fiscal year,” he added, “we saw most of our islands experiencing their most historic monthly foreign air arrivals. We are breaking records in Paradise Island, South Andros too, North Andros and the Berry Islands, Cat Cay, Cat Island, Eleuthera, Exuma and Long Island too. We’re breaking records.”

He also noted a strong rebound in islands still recovering post-Dorian and post-pandemic like Abaco and Grand Bahama.

Mr Cooper said air stopovers in both islands exceeded 2022 levels by 70 per cent.

“When we combine total air and sea arrivals into Grand Bahama, total visitor arrivals exceeded 2022 levels by 137 per cent, and overall visitor arrivals have soared to 91 per cent of 2019 pre-pandemic/Dorian levels,” he said. “When we look at Abaco’s overall air and sea arrivals, you will see that overall visitor arrivals surpassed 2022 figures by 72 per cent and at the end of April, Abaco’s overall visitor arrivals were at 99 per cent of the 2019 figures.”

Mr Cooper credited the hard work of the tourism ministry for improving tourism statistics, adding: “The numbers have never been better.”